Notices

Would it be possible to not add the widget automatically to the home screen after installation?

In my case it went over calendar widget and as it was empty semi-transparent rectangle, I barely was able to find it. I assumed that at least it is not added by default to the home screen but instead I would add it manually through home screen editor.

abbra: That seems to be something hildon-desktop does by itself - once a desktop widget is installed add it to the desktop.

I plan on adding some default text for "empty" countdown-home widgets to make it more visible when the user has not set up any events. I hope that will alleviate your concern to some degree.

I'm only a user, but I do hope that it will be possible to have multiple instances of the same widget, in general. I can definitely imagine wanting to have multiple Post-It note style widgets, for example, or one important widget in the same location on all four desktop screens.

Maybe it's something that has to be coded in the widget itself? That is, rather than the user choosing to add the same widget twice from the Hildon menu, the user has to do some operation in one of the existing widget windows to spawn a new window?

pelago: I will look into having a single instance of the widget handle multiple windows throughout the desktop, but I expect the obstacle to overcome are pretty immense. After I have the single instance version where I want it, I will investigate multiple instances.

I have updated the first post again with the latest changes. Probably the last changes for today, but don't bet the farm on it

Thanks for updating the first post (good for people coming to the thread for the first time), but it would also be excellent if you could in addition paste the changelogs or new screenshots or whatever into the thread itself as a new reply. It's not so bad while the thread is shortish, as current, but after a while it's gets a little tedious to scroll up or click on the first page to see what's new

Just to be clear, I'm assuming nothing actually happens (like an alarm) when an event counts down to zero, does it? I don't think it should, as there's the calendar/alarm apps for that, and it would seem messy to duplicate such functionality. Unless, that is, there is an easy way to hook into the alarm/calendar frameworks...

Thanks for adding the position setting, which on the screenshots is a number which I assume can be edited (presumably coping with clashes intelligently!). I'm wondering if there's a more graphical way to reorder items?

Updated first post.

I have built 0.5-4 and 0.5-5 (obviously the latter is better). These updates add (respectively) full customization and reorganized settings dialog.

You can now customize the font colour and style of the title and values, change the background colour and opacity of the content area and button area, and the corner radius.

You can still leave everything as the defaults if you desire.

Keeping up with my "release early, release really often" development scheme... 0.5-6 is building.

Two changes for this version, both pointed out by Andre at the package page. I guess I should provide a link there in case anyone wants to comment: http://maemo.org/packages/view/countdown-home/

The application is now more opaque when you first install it, which helps on light backgrounds. Also, a position selector is no longer shown if you only have one entry.

Last update for this week. 0.5-7 adds a couple features.

First, it fixes some colours when using the system style for backgrounds and fonts.

Next, you can now set each event to delete after it has passed.

Finally, you can change the way the terms for "years", "weeks", "days", "hours", "minutes", "left", and "ago" are displayed. You can translate them to another language, or show shorter labels if you want.

If there are any comments, please let me know!

Hmm how about integration with the calendar if possible. So you could add a calendar entry and say checkoff "show in countdown home widget". Or vice versa, if you add something in there, it is also added to your calendar.